Material Processes and Making In Medieval Art (Kalamazoo 2016 session)

The International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Western
Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 12 – 15, 2016
Deadline: Sep 15, 2015

Art historians traditionally focus on the finished work, yet attention
to the creative process of making allows us to consider how medieval
builders and artisans constructed monuments, made objects, and planned
workflow for large-scale projects. Furthermore, this line of inquiry
allows us to consider spatial planning and haptic encounters. The use
of new technologies such as digital reconstructions, laser scans, 3D
printing, and other imaging tools provides scholars with the
opportunity to understand the conceptual processes of art making in the
Middle Ages as never before through reverse engineering.

Recent art-historical scholarship has reintroduced interest in the
materiality/object-ness of medieval art and architecture and attendant
somatic responses. Analysis of the processes of making is fundamental
to this renewed interest in the relationship between materiality and
human experience of the art object. Together, these inquiries will
yield new insights into the social, economic, political, and practical
conditions of production.

For this session we are interested in presentations that investigate
the process of making medieval art and architecture and what these
processes tell us about medieval artistic production. We welcome papers
that explore questions such as:
• What can art historians learn from studying creative processes?
• What are the methods of design to finished product?
• How did masons and artisans revise work in progress or finished work?
• Why are some materials selected over others?

DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS: 15 September 2015
Paper proposals should consist of the following:
• Abstract of proposed paper (300 words maximum)
• Completed Participation Information Form available at:
http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#Paper
• CV with mailing information and email address.

PLEASE DIRECT INQUIRIES/SUBMISSIONS TO THE
ORGANIZERS:
Meredith Cohen: mcohen@humnet.ucla.edu
Kristine Tanton: kristanton@gmail.com.

Information about the conference, including proposal submission forms,
may be found at
http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html.